S. K. Tremayne - The Assistant

‘We talked about this; I’d have been a crap mum.’

‘Was it only that, dear?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Well, last time he was here, we got talking about kids, and Simon hinted that you had worries, about … About …’

It was so difficult to find the right words. Stiffening herself, like the frosted spears of long grass at the end of her garden, Janet carried on: ‘Well, Simon told me you were worried about your father. That any children you had might inherit those genes. Late-onset schizophrenia. Like Robert. He said you were sometimes worried that your kids might get it, or that you might get it and leave your kids without a mother. But you shouldn’t—’

‘Mum!’

‘You mustn’t, dear. You mustn’t let that fear dominate your life. It’s not going to happen. When poor Robert went … you know …’

‘Mad? When Dad went mad?’

‘Yes, when your poor father went mad, the doctors looked into all this: there is no history of it on any side of his family, no suggestion of a genetic cause. He was unlucky, that’s all.’

Jo answered, her tone calm. Even cold.

‘Eighty per cent of schizophrenia is linked to genetic causes.’

‘Yes, but not in his case!’

Janet realized she was raising her voice. She rarely did this with Jo. What was happening between them? She couldn’t remember a mother–daughter phone call as awkward as this, not for a while, not since the divorce. She loved her daughter. She and Jo had a good, honest relationship, even if she sometimes felt a bit neglected. At least Jo did ring, once a week; Will rang once a month, at most. Five minutes of small talk from LA, telling her about Caleb, and that’s your lot.

‘Jo, you sound strained.’

‘I told you, I’m fine, Mum. Just worried about stuff. Sometimes.’

‘Stuff?’ Janet persisted. ‘What kind of stuff?’

‘Just, y’know, stuff. The existential pointlessness of life. The eventual heat death of the universe. Reality TV.’

Janet allowed herself a chuckle. This was more like the usual Jo. She sighed with relief.

‘OK, well, if you’re sure you’re all right. Do come down at the weekend. We could have a spot of lunch?’

‘I will, Mum. I am genuinely sorry I snapped. And I suppose I have been a bit stressed. I keep trying to write these scripts, find a way out, but it’s hard. I’ll end up paying rent for ever.’

‘Ah. I wish I could help, Jo. I wish I had bought this house when we had the chance. Then at least you’d have something to inherit, but when Robert—’

‘It’s OK, Mum. It wasn’t your fault. Ah. Anyhow, I’ve got to go, got to go. OK. Bye, Mum.’

Her daughter sounded distracted. As though someone unexpected had walked into her flat.

Janet said goodbye. They ended the clumsy call. Janet put the phone down on the kitchen table. She stared at those photos on the kitchen shelf. Jo and Will. Next to them stood Robert, as a young man. Mid-thirties. Handsome. Jo and Will certainly got their good looks from him, not from herself. In the photo, Robert was smiling. Entirely sane. Here in the next photo he was in the living room, sitting on the floor with Jo and her childhood friends: Billy, Ella, Jenny, Neil, teaching them all to draw and write and paint. Paper and crayons everywhere, a happy childhood mess. Probably this was about a year before the serious symptoms.

Even now the memories grieved her. Tremendously. The slow remorseless damage his insanity inflicted on their lives, which eventually drove Robert to gas himself in the family car.

Janet could remember the specific day – the specific moment – when she first realized something was truly wrong. When she could no longer deny, or ignore, or pretend he was only a bit eccentric, or stressed.

It was so long ago – several decades – yet the memory was vivid.

She had walked from this kitchen into the living room to watch the evening news. Robert was sitting on the sofa, staring at the TV screen. The screen was black, because the TV was unplugged. Yet they never unplugged the TV. She went to plug it in but as she bent down, he shouted, ‘No, no, don’t do that, Janet! Don’t plug it in! Don’t plug it in!’

Perplexed, she had sat down next to him and asked. ‘Why not? Why can’t I plug it in?’

‘ Because it’s talking to me,’ he said, frowning deeply, ‘the television is talking to me.’

The Flask, Highgate. Of course, that’s where we’d go to celebrate Tabitha’s return from Brazil. A quaint, wooden, stained, rickety, middle-class, roaring-fire-and-mulled-wine kind of pub in the nicest part of Highgate, and, it so happens, approximately two and a half minutes’ walk from Arlo’s gorgeous eighteenth-century house with the Damien Hirst spot paintings in the hall. He reserves the best art for his living room, or drawing room, or ballroom, or seventeen-hectare underground sculpture garden, God knows. I’ve only been invited to Arlo’s house once, saw little more than a kitchen as big as my mum’s entire home, and even then I think Arlo would have preferred me to enter by the tradesman’s entrance, or some special tunnel for proletarians.

Traitor’s Gate.

And now I’m in Arlo’s local pub, standing alone. I am several minutes too early. I was so keen to get out of the flat. In case the Assistants turned on me again. If they are turning on me, and it’s not me doing it to myself.

Don’t think about it.

As I wait for everyone else to arrive, I stare at some luridly antique prints on the panelled pub wall. They show famous executions in the area, men hanging from gibbets, cheering crowds. One of the hangings seems to be taking place on top of Primrose Hill. Three men are dangling in a row, barefoot and dancing, grasping at the noose, obviously dying. The engraver has gone to great lengths to get the details of the throttled faces right: the boggling eyes, the protruding tongues, the gruesomely happy, popcorn-munching reactions of the audience.

My research hasn’t told me this. Primrose Hill was a place of execution? The dying, horrified face of the man on the left, apparently biting his own tongue off, as he is slowly asphyxiated, stares directly at me. Right at me. Like it knows. He knows. Who knows?

I am not my father.

Am I? I remember my dad before he lost himself: he was extrovert, full of humour. A frustrated artist who ended up imprisoned in minor accountancy: so he lived, and found joy, through his family. Dad was always ready to have fun, to make me laugh, to chase me round the apple tree pretending he couldn’t catch me. I called him the Ticklemonster and he called me Jo the Go because I could run so fast. He liked to play with words, he liked to play with life . So perhaps I take after him rather than my cautious, conservative mother. Which says?

My anxious, fumbling thoughts – ready to plunge into something worse – are interrupted.

Arlo is at the bar. He gazes at me, blankly confident, arrogantly possessive. I am in his bar. His local. To celebrate the return of my friend, my flatmate. Why did we have to come here?

Because he’s Arlo Scudamore. He is in control. I think he also controls Tabitha. He knows I think that. He also doesn’t apparently care what I think, whether I am hurt or happy, as he is still so bitter about my critical article on the tech giants, where I quoted him as a source supposedly without his permission. He did give permission, he simply didn’t like what I wrote. He claims the article stymied his previously meteoric career. God, I hate his stupid posh-yet-hipster accent. He thinks I’m common? Fuck him. Simon once described Arlo as ‘psychotically ambitious’ and I’ve never forgotten that: it was so accurate.